Bökh

Also known as

Mongolian wrestling · Bokh · Buku

Description

Bökh is the folk wrestling tradition of the Mongols, practised across Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Mongol-descended communities such as the Buryat and Kalmyk. It is one of the "three manly games" (naadam) alongside horse racing and archery, with regional variants including Khalkha bökh, Buryat wrestling, Oirat wrestling, and the Tuvan Khuresh. Depictions of grappling on Xiongnu-era bronzes suggest antiquity of over two millennia. Under the Qing dynasty, the Manchu adopted Mongol bökh, terming it buku (布庫), and formed the Shan Pu Ying (善撲營), an elite imperial wrestling battalion of Manchu and Mongol bannermen based in Beijing; that lineage is cited as a direct ancestor of the modern Chinese jacket-wrestling tradition, shuai jiao.

Tags

mongolian-wrestling · naadam · folk-wrestling

Sources

Identifiers